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Posts Tagged ‘Synopsys’

Next up in our series of predictions is the astute insight of Mike Demler, Senior Analyst with The Linley Group & MICROPROCESSOR report, and former EDA & Chip Design news analyst.

“It’s all about the ecosystem triad: EDA + foundry + IP. Cadence and Synopsys continue to evolve more in the IP direction, and there is really not much to say about the tools that hasn’t been said for a long time —just make it all work together! Redundant “standards” and artificial barriers to interoperability cost the semiconductor industry by lowering productivity. This is the problem with the disaggregated model. Back in the days when “real men” had fabs, companies could develop complete design flows without such obstacles.

The triad needs to work together to get over the stall inMoore’s Law at 28nm. Foundries are incurring delays in getting to 16/14nm FinFETS, and almost nobody is going to use 20nm. The chip industry needs an overall lower-cost solution in order to make sub-28nm processes economically viable. Forget 3D ICs, those will be niche products for a long time, about as popular as 3D TV.

For more than several years now, Peggy Aycinena has noted the dearth of new blood entering the EDA and IP industry ranks. Those of us who started in the industry in the 1980s still seem to dominate the corporate, engineering and marketing ranks. One area where we do see an infusion of new generation folks is in the marketing communications area. So Liz Massingill and I asked three of the new generation people to allow us to put them on the spot and talk a little about what new and old generation EDA and IP people bring to the party. With us are: McKenzie Mortensen of IPextreme, Darcy Pierce of Synopsys and Hannah Watanabe of Synopsys.

Ed: McKenzie, Darcy, Hannah, thanks for taking the time to speak with us today. So let’s kick off with a question about you. What does the new generation bring to EDA and IP that the old generation doesn’t?

McKenzie: We love to shake things up.

Darcy: One of the more obvious attributes that I think our generation brings to the table is a fresh perspective, especially in the “older” industry of EDA where everyone seems to have 20+ years of experience.

Hannah: I think we bring a fresh perspective on how technology is being used today, especially by those who are just entering the work force, the Generation Y people.

Cary Chin, Director of Technical Marketing at Synopsys, has an intriguing take on how to approach verification now that the mandate for design project managers is to meet the low power requirement of the target end-product. Chin says that if we look at verification in terms of fine and broad “granularity,” users will meet their verification goals with a lot less angst and anguish. However, at first glance, I had no idea what Chin was talking about…which is why we asked him to join us and talk about this idea.

Ed: Cary, you’ve been recently talking about granularity in verification, especially in terms of low power. What does this all mean?

Cary: When I think of granularity in low power design, I’m thinking about the size of the “chunks” that we manipulate to improve the energy efficiency (or “low power performance”) of a design. For example, in most of today’s low power methodologies, large functional blocks are the boundaries we work within – we can shut down these blocks or manipulate the voltage to save energy when peak performance isn’t required. This boundary level isn’t just a matter of convenience; our tools and methodologies for both implementation and verification can only deal with certain levels of complexity, so we are confined in many dimensions in how we can pursue finer granularity.

The next entry in our prediction series comes from Karen Bartleson, esteemed blogger, standards proponent, social media guru and Sr. Director of Community Marketing at Synopsys:

Karen Bartleson

2013 will be the year when people stop saying “engineers don’t use social media.” The data will show that indeed, they do use social media for both personal and work purposes. Not all engineers use it and some never will, but the way people live and work has changed. Engineers who are savvy about the modern ways that people communicate are seeing the benefits of incorporating social media into their regular activities.

Ed: What does the Atrenta acquisition of NextOp and the Synopsys acquisition of Springsoft mean to EDA?

Mike: It probably goes without saying that these two acquisitions are very different, both in their objectives and impact on the industry. The bottom line on the NextOp acquisition is that it represents strategic maneuvering by Atrenta as they attempt to emerge from their 10-year gestation period, which is generally the limit for VC-funded startups. I provide a more detailed analysis in an Analysis Brief, which is available from the EE Daily News.

The Synopsys-Springsoft acquisition may finally fill the hole in analog/custom implementation that Synopsys has had. When the Laker tools came on the landscape, they immediately gave Cadence some competition for Virtuoso. Synopsys has never been able to accomplish that with Galaxy Custom Designer, nor its predecessor (Cosmos).

Ed: What sort of new day does it herald for EDA?

Mike: As far as meaning to the EDA industry overall, again there are two different answers. For Atrenta-NextOp, this serves as a bellwether for the entire group of ~10-year old EDA startups. What are their exit strategies?

For Synopsys-Springsoft, the answer is more complex, and goes beyond the immediate impact in the analog/custom design space. With ~$1B in acquisitions in less than a year, Synopsys is looking more and more like a huge EDA conglomerate. They are separating themselves further from the 2nd and 3rd place companies, at least in terms of size. The industry dynamics will inevitably change as a result.

Ed: What’s the significance?

Mike: In a nutshell – the EDA industry continues to shrink. Acquisitions mean lost jobs. With 10-years or more now the norm to grow an EDA company, other industries look more attractive, both for capital investment and for skilled engineers.

Yesterday we heard from Jim Hogan on the NextOp acquisition. Today Gary Smith chimes in on NextOp and the recent Springsoft buyout.

Ed: What do the Atrenta acquisition of NextOp and the Synopsys acquisition of Springsoft mean to EDA?

Gary: Technology wise the Atrenta acquisition means that the Silicon Virtual Prototype is becoming a reality. Business wise it could be the start of the roll-up in the middle.

Springsoft was always a possible roller-upper but generally thought of as a long shot because of theirTaiwanheadquarters. Springsoft certainly makes Synopsys stronger, especially with the Laker analog product, but doesn’t affect the SVP or the RTL sign-off tool market. Debug is just being rolled up into the simulator.

Ed: What sort of new day does it herald for EDA?

Gary: With the creation of the SVP we now have the RTL sign-off established. This then is the breakpoint between design and implementation, just as the gate-level netlist was in the past. This will free up a large group of designers, and enable a new larger group of designers, which in-turn will cause the explosion of new systems development.

To finish off our series of predictions, I would like to point you to another series of interesting and informative prophesies. Click on the following topics to see these predictions collected by Brian Bailey, Editor of EDA DesignLine.

I believe that 2012 will be a challenging, but very interesting year. The pressure on the big EDA companies will definitely increase. Pressure coming from the shareholders, and from the users, who can play one against each other due to comparable offerings. From a technical point of view, the challenges keep rising at an even faster pace and less solutions are provided. I expect that the Synopsys/Magma merger will go through, which will take away an important piece of variety in the community. Consequently, this will increase the consideration of alternative solutions. This in return will help to improve or establish collaboration between EDA companies, leaders and smaller ones, and we might see teaming ups of some of the smaller ones to assemble packaged solutions to well-defined problems instead of proposing point tools. Despite this optimism, I expect that a lot of the smaller EDA tool providers will need to think out of the box in the future to survive.